Grateful for Airstrikes, Advancing Libyan Rebels Face New Challenges

U.S. and European missions have cleared the rebels' way forward, but their next steps will require more than bombs

AJDABIA
and BREGA, Libya -- The Saturday after U.S. and European air strikes
destroyed the tanks Qaddafi had sent to surround Ajdabia, the mood was
high among the Libyans who came in from elsewhere to survey the damage
in the town. Next to a ravaged tank at the outskirts of the city lay the
scorched corpse of one of Qaddafi's soldier. Someone jerked away the
blanket covering the fire-blackened skull and carefully placed the
insignia, whose two green stripes and wreath-encircled tank identified
the man as having been a corporal in the Armed Guardian Unit of the
Libyan Jamahiriyya's army, on top of the blanket. A crowd of civilians
photographed the sight before jumping on a destroyed tank, one of about
20 littering the road leading to Ajdabia.

Twelve days ago,
Ajdabia, the strategic crossroads between the opposition capital of
Benghazi and Qaddafi's stronghold in Tripoli, was firmly in rebel hands.
Qaddafi hit it with air power and ground troops and took over in a
sweep many feared would ultimately extend to Benghazi. Now the streets
of the once-thriving town of some 150,000 residents are largely empty,
save for a few men strolling who, one Libyan from Benghazi noted, were
suspiciously clad in sweatpants with the logo of the Tripoli football
club. "Who would wear that here? We're in Benghazi football club
territory," said 26-year-old Mohammed Benghouzzi.

I first
encountered the rebel soldiers in their native habitat -- along the
desert highway connecting Benghazi to Tripoli -- after their first big
victory against Qaddafi's forces, which they had driven them out of
Brega on March second. Their mood was triumphant; they had shocked even
themselves with their success.

By March 26, the soldiers had
just regained control of Ajdabia and Brega as well -- mainly as a result
of the air strikes that had begun at midnight. Field-trippers from
Benghazi, who came to inspect the damage, verify the town's status, or
look for loved ones, far outnumbered the soldiers, whose mood was more
dazed than festive.

"We knew the air strikes were coming because
we heard the planes," said Mamdoh Khalifa, a 27-year-old Egyptian
refrigeration technician who illegally crossed the border into Libya "to
fight Qaddafi and seek martyrdom." Khalifa said that he and his fellow
soldiers had been 20 kilometers north of Ajdabia the night before. "At
midnight we hard the bombs, and at one a.m. we took the city." After
hearing the air strikes, they returned to Ajdabia. "No one gave us the
command to go," said Khalifa. "Our command structure is not clear. We
don't wait for orders."

"We thank the coalition forces,"
said Wa'il Musa Mohammed, 25 years old and a seven-year veteran of
Qaddafi's army before he joined the rebels, clasping his hands together.
"Qaddafi killed our brothers -- he is a criminal." Gesturing toward a
single-story concrete building, whose green and white striped walls were
riddled with bullet holes, Mohammed said, "They were here yesterday." A
few mattresses were thrown on the floor next to some dull-colored
blankets and empty soda cans.

Ajdabia's western gate opens the
road to Brega and, some 700 kilometers further, Tripoli. After air strikes cleared Ajdabia's access points from the tanks that had been
planted there for at least three days, rebels moved ahead to Brega. I
traveled with them.

The road was clear almost to Brega, until, as
we neared the city, hundreds of vehicles shot down the highway back
towards Ajdabia, honking furiously and stirring up the desert sands.
Reports of a car accident followed the delivery of three living, one
almost surely not, in truck flatbeds.

Nasib Daow, an engineer
from Benghazi, said he came to Brega with his two sons to fight. His
keffiyeh was tied neatly around his head and he grasped his Kalashnikov
with ease, a soldier with a dignified trace of a Scottish accent, a
token of his studies in Perth. "It's Qaddafi's fault that everybody
thinks every Libyan has a bomb in his pocket. We want freedom and
democracy, we want to be loved by the whole world."

"Look at
this," Daow said. "They don't even hit the asphalt. We thank everyone
very much for the air support. They saved a lot of civilian lives. We
don't need foreign troops though. We don't have to be Iraq and
Afghanistan. In the future, we can be friends in trade and technology,
through companies."

Mainly on account of Qaddafi's violent
crackdown by land and sky, Brega itself was a dark and rubbled ghost
town, with electricity out and reportedly water as well. The few cars
left on the streets were burned out. Soldiers wandered the streets,
advising that the front line was some 6 kilometers outside the town
limits, and that it was too late to go there.

The next day,
rebel soldiers arrived at Ras Lanouf and, with continuous air cover,
pushed on past Bin Jawwad to a point about 120 kilometers outside of
Sirte. With a population of 150,000, Sirte is the last major settlement
between the rebels' front line and the west they hope to liberate. It is
also Qaddafi's hometown and a place where tribal politics, ancient
alliances and enmities, are likely to play a significant role in the
fate of the city. As rebels hover in the desert, pondering a strategy
for taking Sirte, the U.S. and European air cover might not be as
helpful as it was in, for example, Ajdabia. Sirte is the first town the
rebels will assault that may not be predisposed to supporting the
revolutionaries. If and when they arrive, their biggest challenges may
be political, not military.

Said Marai El-Mutardi, a 30-year-old
petroleum engineer working in the Congo whose visit home to Benghazi
took an unexpected turn five weeks ago, said, "We think Sirte will be
taken from within. It's very complicated there with the tribes -- let
them work it out, maybe we take the desert road around Sirte and go join
the revolutionaries in Misrata."

On March 23, before the air
strikes on Ajdabia began, Rashid El-Qaddari had rested pensively against
a banged-up white sedan on the highway 12 kilometers north of town.
El-Qaddari, a master's student in history at Benghazi's Gar Younis
University, was thinking of his brother in Ajdabia, who he had not
talked to in four days. "We want air strikes, but the tanks are in
between buildings. They're using human shields. They're negotiating a
surrender now with a civilian inside the city. I don't know who it is,"
said El-Qaddari. "Unless there are civilian casualties, we prefer air strikes to negotiated surrender -- it simplifies the operation."

El-Qaddari
got his air strikes, and the rebels got Ajdabia. But Sirte, their new
focus, may not be as easy. As the rebels move west, closer to Qaddafi's
center of power, they will encounter similar challenges.Now they must
count on the internal politics in contested towns to shift in their
favor. "Qaddafi's support is breaking. With continued air strikes, we can
get to Tripoli," said Daow.

Photo by Andrew Winning/Reuters

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Clare Morgana Gillis is a freelance journalist based in the Middle East. She recently completed her PhD in history at Harvard University.